Monday, November 26, 2012

Beyond the novel inclusion of our rocket bird and turbo cat - up top - this 1584 treatise on explosive devices appears to illustrate weaponry seen in earlier manuscripts and offers no new technologies for the Renaissance commando types.

I thing the first picture actually depicts animal borne bombs to bring down a castle. the caption says "ein schloss mit meiner[?] katzen[?] anzüge zündten"- something about using a cat to attack a castle?

Fun fact, one of the myths that may or may not be true about Ghengis Khan is that when laying siege to a city, he told the city that all he wanted was a "tribute of cats and birds" and once the animals were sent out he did just this- lighting them on fire and releasing them to run right back into the city.

@det teoretiske mennesketI'm pretty sure it says "Ein Schloß mit Ainer Katzen an zür zündten", which would probably be rendered something like "Ein Schloß mit einer Katzen an zu zünden" in Modern German. (Yeah, yeah, actually Schloss in the more recent spelling.) Wikipedia has a picture of some blackletter typefaces for comparison: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gebrochene_Schriften.png

In fact, it seems to me that this book was well-known before: Heidelberg digital library has it and also there is an edition by Rainer Leng devoted to "Buch von den probierten Künsten". If I am wrong please tell me.